Friday, October 17, 2008

What The?

Our apartment has hot water/cold water problems about once a month. Some days a notice will appear on the building entrance letting tenants know the water will be off from 8am to 4pm. Inconvenient. But what do you do?

Recently, we received notice that to correct the ongoing problem, workers will be coming to our apartments to replace the pipes.

Last week, they showed up just as I was leaving for work. They put plastic on the hardwood floors. They cut holes in the wall to access the pipes. Suzy asked how long this was going to take.

Their response: "Two weeks."

Our response: "What?!"

You can see in this picture where they cut the holes in the wall, and how they're covered with plastic wrap and not-quite duct tape.

The yellow bit in this picture is the plastic wrap in the kitchen directly below ours. We can also see the plastic wrap of the kitchen directly above us.

The noise doesn't carry through the apartment. But it's pretty clear in the kitchen. We hear all our neighbors' conversations in the evening. They probably hear all our kids' screaming in the morning. Last night, it sounded like a group of guys started yelling and got into a fist fight in the apartment below us. I gave Suzy a should-I-call-the-cops-? look and she just said, "Soccer game. Someone must have scored." Which made the noise more pleasant.

When I mentioned how ridiculous this was to my art director at work, he just said, "Welcome to Switzerland."